This paper is designed to provide a summary of the various meter systems from eight companies which will present products at this seminar. First, the purpose of television meters and three new meter philosophies are identified and subsequently, the operational characteristics of the presenting companys nine meter systems are summarized.
The old medium Videotext, connected by computers to a voice response telephone system, can transfer videotext into interactive television. This new medium is used for several purposes. One of them is to use interactive videotext for media research. In the Netherlands three parties found each other in experimenting in the Phone Text panel. In this panel of 1.000 households Intomart conducts media surveys and ad hoc surveys on advertising effectiveness. The technique is completely in the hands of Teleworld, and IP is the sponsor who also is responsible for the connection to RTL4 text. The paper describes the technique and examples of three surveys. The conclusions are that the opportunities for this new instrument are big, especially in continuous surveys.
Since 1988 Summo, in cooperation with the outdoor advertising companies in Holland and AGB Media, have researched the best way to measure audiences for outdoor advertising campaigns. The main requirements for the audience research model were: - independence of type of outdoor advertising; - allowing provisions for comparison between different outdoor campaigns; - provisions for inter-mediia comparisons; - allowing provisions media planning of custombuild outdoor plans as well as ready made packages; - allowing provisions updated by adding new installations at outdoor sites. In 1990 the following research method was agreed upon by all parties; a. Identification of all 17 sites on maps and classification of their most important aspects such as, for instance illumination of the site. b. Entering on identical maps all journeys made by a sample of 10 individuals 13 years of age and older during a period of 7 days above the routes followed for these journeys. In addition, the following data were recorded for each journey: - time, - main means of transport, - reason why journey was made. c. By ckecking all 270.000 journeys with the 17 sites on the maps, the contact probability with each site per respondent can be determined. This masterfile provides the opportunity to calculate the following data for any combination of sites: - total number of contacts - net reach of the campaign - average contact frequency - average number of different sites that the respondent was confronted with. This analysis is independent of the combination of outdoor companies with whom the campaign was booked or is going to be booked. The research programme was carried out in 1990 and 1991. The results obtained were presented in November 1991. The contact probability has to be defined as actual presence in the street", regardless of position in relation to the site itself and regardless of means of transport. This will be discussed elsewhere in this article. The outdoor advertising companies have decided that the AGB masterfile will be updated four times a year, i.e. by adding their latest sites. The system requires the use of a "Geographical Information System (G.I.S.) to make easy access and update facilities possible. This, too, will be discussed later on.
In September 1989 a short but heavy multimedia campaign was started to increase the knowledge in the Netherlands of the new tax laws that will influence everybody's life as from the first of January 1990. A small brochure was inserted in all TV guides during one week. Small newspaper ads were announcing this brochure for the next week tv magazine. During that week special television spots were pointing out the new tax laws for next year and that useful information could be found in this weeks televison magazine. This offered the opportunity for the researchers of the group of publishers of tv-guides, the media buying company Media Matters, and AGB-Intomart to use this multi media campaign as a real-life experiment. The purpose was to test if synergy between the three different media types occurred and if there were any multimedia effects on the main goals of the campaign: to increase the intensity of reading of the brochure and to increase the knowledge of the relevant target group on some crucial aspects of the new tax laws. The research was carried out during two weeks by means of 8 daily telephone interviewing waves of between 125 and 170 individuals each. In total 1166 individuals were interviewed. The analyses were carried out with help of multiple regression techniques to show the different influences and interactions from a number of relevant variables on the selected dependent variables: reading intensity of the brochure and level of knowledge on the new tax laws.
Radio audience measurement is normally undertaken by means of quarter- hour-diary research. This type of measurement provides the ordinary 'ratings' that are being used for media planning as well as for programme evaluation. This data provides no information about the quality of radio listening. This paper presents the methodology and results of a research programme carried out in 1983 in the Netherlands. The research had two separate objectives: to determine the reliability (and validity) of the currently used diary measurement and on the other hand to quantify the quality of radio listening particularly activities carried out during listening and the attention level of the listeners.